


At the Edge of the Universe

by Antheaisarealname



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassians as Nagas, Character Turned Into Vampire, Deep Space Nine as a multidimensional portal, Different species existing in different worlds at different times, Gen, They all meet up on DS9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 08:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17977781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antheaisarealname/pseuds/Antheaisarealname
Summary: Where Deep Space Nine is a point of passage between different universes, Julian is the newly appointed CMO and a vampire and Miles O’Brien is scheduled for a physical.





	At the Edge of the Universe

Miles O’Brien took a deep, long, calming breath, stepped forward and did not walk into the Infirmary. _Damn_. _Okay, another try, then_.

A deep, long, calming breath later, he’d taken yet another step closer to the door, but his hand still hesitated on the pad, unable to press the chime. He glanced at his watch, sternly informing his mind that it was most definitely not a stalling tactic, and cursed silently when he realised that he was almost late for his physical. He wondered for the tenth time if there was any chance he could refuse a physical or invent an emergency maintenance in order to get away. His brain came up with the same answer as the last 10 times: _Maybe, but the Commander is not going to be happy about that._

It was not that he was afraid of going through a physical, far from it. He was almost positive he was as fit as a fiddle, or at least in far better shape than he’d ever been. It was DS9’s new CMO who was causing him anxiety. Strictly speaking, he had yet to officially meet Dr Julian Bashir, who freshly arrived on the station less than two weeks prior, but he read his official file and heard what people said about him. He now knew that he was very young - an uncharitable mind as that of Chief O’Brien might have called him callow - maddeningly talkative, fairly competent in spite of everything and a tad arrogant. None of that particularly mattered to Miles, who’d met his fair share of callow, talkative and arrogant officers. No, the problem was the small line at the very start of the Doctor’s file, just under his name and position; the line that stated, in characters so small that it seemed everyone just wanted to forget the whole affair: _Race: human (vampire)._

Not for the first time in the last two weeks, he questioned the sanity of whoever thought having a vampire play doctor was a good idea. Last time he’d checked, vampires survived entirely off human blood; how could anyone trust a blood-sucker to operate a patient? To complete transfusions? He loved the Federation open-mindedness and equal opportunity views, but there was such a thing as being too forward-thinking. Suddenly, his comm went off - _Sisko to O’Brien! -_ interrupting his train of thought and he immediately answered it, barely believing his luck.

“O’Brien to Sisko, how may I help you Commander?” _Oh please, please, please, let it be an emergency…_

Sisko hesitated for a second, before enquiring softly: “Are you at the Infirmary right now?”

Miles stared at the menacing door, dropping his tone of voice even lower (vampires were known to have excellent hearing): “Yes, just arrived, but I have not gone in yet. If you need me back in Ops, I could be there in…”

“Oh nonono, Chief”, Sisko interrupted him and O’Brien swore he could hear him smiling, “I just wanted to check; please go in or you will be late for your physical. Sisko out.”

O’Brien remained there for a bit longer, mentally cursing senior officers with a sense of humour.

Knowing there was no way to get out of that, he finally resolved to press the chime and, as the door slid open, marched inside the Infirmary with as much dignity as one possibly marching to his death could muster. The Infirmary was deserted, except for a young man in medical uniform sitting in front of a control panel and sipping from a cup. Upon noticing his entrance, the youth enthusiastically jumped to his feet and walked up to him, extending a hand in greeting.

“You must be Chief O’Brien”, he exclaimed happily, leaving Miles no choice but to shake the proffered limb. “I am Dr Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer. How do you do?”

Miles muttered a _how do you do_ , all the while trying to reign in his surprise; truth be told, Bashir was not at all what he’d been expecting. If he was honest, he was prepared to face someone like that damned Naga tailor: pale and suave, possibly with dark hair and clad in a suit, with a disposition so superior that even the meekest individual would have felt the need to punch them. Bashir was nothing like that: he had a dark complexion, hazel eyes, brown and curly hair and a smile that could only be called infectious. Also, young was an understatement. The file stated that he was 27, but the face that looked back at him looked closer to 20 than 30. Miles relaxed slightly and then told himself off for walking into the trap; that was obviously how they got you, acting all nice and puppy-like until you dropped your guard and suddenly you had teeth at your neck. Not him! 

Dr Bashir pointed him in the direction of a chair, smile never leaving his face. “Please sit down while I gather my stuff.” Down Miles sat, all the while checking every movement of the vampire as the young man picked up a number of devices from the control panel and approached him. As the first weird instrument was pointed at him and a light shone on his face, he steeled himself, ready for whatever would come. What came was a not particularly exciting 20 minutes’ worth of poking and prodding and giving monosyllabic answers to muttered questions. At the end of it all, he was so underwhelmed he was starting to get a headache. Finally, Bashir put down the last metallic gadget and sighed in satisfaction, jutting down a few notes.

“Excellent, thank you very much for your patience! You are doing amazingly well for someone of your ag- I mean, you are doing amazingly well! I would just suggest limiting the amount of caffeine and upping physical activity – it is very good both for your physical and mental health, you know, gives you a chance to lower stress levels – but for the rest, you are as fit as a fiddle. Good to go!”

O’Brien just blinked at the onslaught of words after the protracted quietness and did not move. Was that really it? The vampire gazed at him curiously: “… unless you had any questions?”, he suggested hesitantly, as the other man just tried to come to terms with how ridiculously normal the whole thing had been.

“Was that really all?”, he heard himself ask in blatant incredulity.

Bashir nodded, a slight smile still playing on his mouth. Miles, still not ready to admit he huffed and worried for hours for no real cause, mindlessly went on: “No strange injections? Weird medical procedures? Excuses to take a blood sample?” 

The words were barely out of his mouth that he wanted to take them back. Of all the daft things he could have said… He risked a look at the youth: still smiling, thank god. 

“Nothing of the sort, I assure you Chief. You see, I recalibrated the instruments to take all the data needed to… Oh.” 

The _oh_ was soft, almost like an afterthought, but rang louder than all the words that preceded it. The young man’s face froze for a second, bright eyes dilating and then growing dull as his brain apparently took the words in and shone a new light onto them. His lower lip trembled as he glanced away and O’Brien felt like kicking himself. Still, the youth put on a brave, if slightly tremulous, smile and started subtly moving away from him, distancing himself.

“But you were joking, of course. My apologies, I can be a little slow when it comes to…”

As he probably looked for a polite word synonymous with “insensitive jibe”, the Chief Engineer hurriedly tried to salvage the situation.

“Oh, I was not actually! You see, I had not had a medical examination in a long time, but the last time, must be years now, it was absolutely mad, it took hours, I tell you, hours! They swiped my mouth, they took my blood, they poked me everywhere…”

He knew he was rambling and probably sounded like a whiny ninny, but it did not matter as much as the look of utter relief that descended upon the doctor’s features.

“Oh of course, of course”, the doctor cut in when Miles had finished embarrassing himself, “my apologies, I thought… You know, many people just like to be funny, no harm done naturally, and a vampire who is also a doctor is certainly something unusual so who can blame them? Still, it’s kind of a senseless joke to make when it comes to me, I mean, I do not even drink blood! I managed to synthetize a drug that gives me all the nutrients I require to function, so I just mix it with any food or drink I happen to be consuming. Unbeknownst to most people, a vampire’s organs do not stop working, they just process things a little differently. So yeah, I never quite know how to respond to those comments, though maybe it is not really necessary to answer, right? I mean they are just harmless jokes and I am probably just too sensitive…”   

“They are all idiots”, Miles injected decisively, stepping on the guilt that he felt bubbling up.

Bashir bit his lip uncertainly, apparently not disagreeing but feeling that maybe he should, and O’Brien decided to change the subject.

“So… sport, right? I was actually considering taking up racquetball again, it’s been a while since I practiced regularly, I kind of miss it and I finally finished fixing the sport room…”

“Oh I absolutely love racquetball!”, the doctor confided excitedly. “And tennis too! I also used to play actually, I was the captain of the Medical Academy racquetball team.”

“Brilliant”, Miles announced with carefully crafted enthusiasm, “maybe we can play together one of these days…”

“What a fantastic idea! I am free on Tuesday, shall we say sixish?”

O’Brien finally got up from the chair and started moving towards the door. “Sounds good to me”, he mentioned cheerfully, smelling freedom. “Thank you, doctor, see you later.”

“See you next Tuesday, Chief!”, Bashir called out happily, moving back to the monitor.

* * *

 

Much later, after wishing his daughter goodnight and lying down next to his wife, it finally occurred to him that he’d just invited the captain of the Medical Academy racquetball team, a man ten years his junior and a vampire to have a racquetball game with him. When his wife Keiko laughed at his dumbfounded expression (after he’d explained to her the reason for it and that the three people he was talking about were actually just one person), he took it as further proof that, sometime after his arrival on Deep Space 9, he’d lost what remained of his sanity.


End file.
